I thought I wouldn’t last 10 minutes. But I was there for nearly an hour. Everyone was amazed that we had so much to say.

We talked about a lot of things. Local politics, mutual acquaintances, relatives, my social life, his thoughts on life, the people sleeping on the beds next to him.

We were very relaxed. Very casual. Very friendly.

A friend called up to say hi. To check up on him. So I passed the phone over.

There was a delighted smile on his face as he yakked animatedly with my friend. He couldn’t hear the voice very well and handed the phone back to me after a while. But not after some friendly chatter.

I looked at him sitting cross-legged. Garbed in a hospital gown. Sipping hot milo. And my heart ached. I wanted so badly to bring him home where he belongs.

“It’s getting late, time to go home and bring your mother out for dinner. Don’t forget to buy back food for your brother,” he said.

“Ok, let me pray for you first.”

And for the first time since I can’t remember when, my dad took my hand in his. We bowed our heads and I prayed for him. For his health to be restored. For him to come back home.

I waved at him cheerily as I left. But when I got into the car, the tears came. I miss him.

Updates as at 30th June: My dad has been discharged from the hospital and is much better now. Thank you so much for your prayers, well wishes, calls and loving concern. They are much appreciated…

Photo Credits

http://www.coolcatalyst.com/cccomm.php?id=725_0_1_0_C

What’s this about Australia and my pals, huh? It seems that everyone who’s anyone is going there. It was barely one month ago that we met up before our dear friend Shirley flew to Melbourne. And now, we just had a farewell for another dear friend Emily who’s going to Melbourne in a couple of weeks’ time.

“So, who’s going to Melbourne next?” Uncle Pong asked.

“Not me!” I thought and said out loud. To be honest, I’m starting to feel very leary over Australia and the pull it has on my closest and dearest pals. And who can blame me? One of my oldest friends Kal is already residing in Sydney. There goes my faithful childhood friend and prayer partner. My bezzie will be following suit in a few months’ time. There goes my closest chum and partner in crime.

What’s the deal with Australia anyway? It’s just a land with kangaroos and koalas. Big deal. Malaysia got Orang Utans and Hornbills what. What’s more, here we have authentic Bah Kut Teh. And did I mention the sumptious Fried Kai Lan and Four Types of Mixed Vege dishes? Scrumptious!

Fried Kailan – can’t find it anywhere else wan!

Mixed vegetables

And the people, you’ve gotta love the bad drivers friendly, sweet and hospitable people that Malaysians are. We are Malaysia, truly Asia.

The warmth of these three Malaysians’ smiles will be forever imprinted in the deepest recesses of your memory. Really wan.

Anyway, in spite of all our efforts to lure Emily to stay on in Malaysia, she has made up her mind and had peace about her decision to move over there for at least a while. So, we decided to be supportive and happy for her. But not before we did this:

This is what happens to people who wants to migrate to Australia.

Rants aside, we are truly happy that God has made a way for Emily to be in Melbourne. It was not an easy decision to make but with every step she took, the path became clearer and clearer. May you achieve all that you ever hoped and longed for, dearie!

One for the album

I woke up with a foreboding feeling today. Like something was about to happen and I had to be ready to deal with it.

Last week, my colleague who was in charge of payroll woke up with that same feeling. Something seemed to tell her to process the our payroll cheques pronto. She heeded her intuition and got everything ready way ahead of the usual schedule.

Today, the payroll server decided to crash. On the day my colleague would normally print out the payroll slips. My team and I executed the recovery plan to bring the part of the data back to production while waiting for the whole system to be serviced. But there wasn’t enough resources to bring both the payroll information and production data up together at the same time. But since the paychecks have already been printed, there was no need for the payroll system to be up.

Thank God for this thing called intuition and my colleague’s speed in obeying it. Otherwise, everyone on the firm would want my head for breakfast for any delays in receiving their paychecks.

Ever had cases of intuition happening to you? Would love to hear it.

Photo Credits

It’s so easy to get good feedback from people.

• “Wah, that was awesome, man!”
• “I love the way you think/write/sing/act.”
• “You are soooo photogenic!”

It’s equally easy to get no feedback from them.

• An event which you helped organised was over and done with. And everyone involved went on silent mode.
• You sang your heart out in a wedding ceremony. But besides some polite applause, no one commented anything about it. Not even your friends.
• You spent hours coaching a little underprivileged boy to read under the ministry of free tuition organised by your church. After a few months, the boy stopped coming over. No word was said as to the reasons why.

In those instances, silence does not speak a thousand words. Even if you suck at singing/teaching/organising, it’ll still be helpful to know where you faltered and improve upon them. At least it will give you some pointers as to where you should go to next.

It is unfortunate, but constructive feedback is a rare thing to receive. Being the polite Asians that we are, we detest having to tell someone areas that they need to improve upon. We’d rather say nothing than say something potentially hurtful.

And so, it was a surprise to me to receive this from the founders of Elijah House Malaysia. A feedback letter gathered from the participants of the small group I led the past few months and also from the other senior facilitators.

Hahah, if you noticed, you can mostly see only my good traits here. Muahahaha

Of course my eyes zoomed in straight into the ‘To Be Improved’ areas. I found them to be true and told ML (one of the founders) so. It was a truly enriching and moving feedback session. Encouragement, advice and correction were given in love and she ended by praying for me. Her insightful prayer as to what was going on within me was spot on. Only God could have told her that. I felt the last vestiges of weariness and apathy on some issues slipping away from me. I felt free.

The feedback missive also confirmed what I already knew in my heart. About the calling that I felt to this type of ministry since year 2000. It was like another brick is laid upon the path which I am to walk on. How cool is that? :D

On another note, here’s another missive my department received in the month of June. It was a response to a query about the pricing of services. Are these people for real??

Dad is the cook in our family. And what a great cook he is, too (lucky mom!). I suspect that this has impacted me at some very deep level. Somehow, all my ex-flames are good cooks and pamper me with food, food and more food. The way to my heart is through my stomach :D

As the cook, he normally asks for feedback about the cuisine he prepares for us each day. Now, dad’s a good cook but there are some dishes which he has yet to master to perfection. Added to the fact that we kids are rather fussy eaters, it’s quite difficult to please our taste buds 100% of the time.

We know our place though. And we are highly appreciative of home-cooked food. So even if it doesn’t fit our taste buds, we will eat it anyway albeit in smaller portions.

- how we kids diplomatically give our feedback to our dad about his cookin’

Trailers are supposed to be the delicious tantalising entrees of a show. But in the case of Cars, it was not. I took one look at it and yawned. The jokes dished out by a rusty truck were trite:

Nah, she just loves me for my body!

Bleh. I dismissed it as just another show for car buffs. But then a friend watched it THREE times. And there were many good reviews about it. So when my movie buddy asked if I wanted to watch Cars, I said yes like a shot.

And what a lovely, lovely show it was!

It’s one of the best animated productions I’ve seen in a while. Never thought I’d like it this way – as said before, the trailer really did not do it much justice. There were many, many funny moments and moving ones too. In short, it’s a movie with a lot of heart. It’s about friendship, love and putting others above one’s self.

It’s simply amazing. I can understand why that friend of mine watched it over and over again. There were so many cute and important details that gets embedded in the movie. To fully enjoy the movie experience, do a little background study on the voices behind these cars. I was tickled pink by Governor Arnie’s voice.

Now, if I had a way to give my input to the trailer, I’d include Arnie, a car called Guido (“Pitstop!”) and perhaps some flies. That would certainly grab my attention and tell me that this animation is a one-of-a-kind.

And of course watching it with that very nice movie kaki made the night even more memorable :)

I keep forgetting that I have make up on today. My hands keep rubbing my eyes and I wonder, what’s the gunk on my fingers before realising (again!) that I had mascara and eye shadow on. Yikes. Would need to repair it later.

Bezzie asked me to look my best at work today. I’ll report why later if anything interesting happens.

Updates!

Omigosh!

I’m actually going to appear in a Reality TV Show!

More details later. Man, I’m swooning!!!

Photo Credits

A couple of months ago, I tried implementing Gravatars but it didn’t really work. Firstly, not many of you have Gravatar accounts. Secondly, I couldn’t implement the hack to show a cute chubby cat’s picture (courtesy of fruity) to replace those without Gravatars. So all I see are mostly blank boxes where your Gravatar should rightly be.

Well no more. No more blank boxes for me. I want to see pictures. Not only of me but you, dear blog readers. For you regular commentators, I have assigned pictures to your user names. To see what I have assigned to you guys, drop a comment and the photo will appear. You can also woot at someone’s glam pic :)

For those with the cute cat photo below, it means that you have not been assigned an avatar yet. But at least, it’s not a blank box – phew! If you want to change your avatar, just drop me an email and attach the pic of your choice. I’ll do the swap as soon as I can. Easy peasy.

So go ahead. Check out or get your own unique avatar today!